


say my name like it belongs in your mouth

by fartherfaster



Series: Imperious Wrecks [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 08:55:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3762232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fartherfaster/pseuds/fartherfaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barnes swallows, though his coffee mug remains untouched on the counter. “Carter, all right,” he says, and Sharon gets the distinct impression that this isn’t the first time that name has snapped sharply between his tongue and teeth. There’s something in the way his eyes linger on her mouth, the corner of her jaw, the single curl of hair that’s fallen short of her braid. “Carter, I’d like to propose a compromise,” he says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	say my name like it belongs in your mouth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sevenfoxes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfoxes/gifts).



> **sevenfoxes** came to my tumblr askbox and said "sharon/steve/bucky, a compromise". 4k later, i have an answer.
> 
> bless the darling **lariagwyn** for beta-reading and handholding.

Steve takes her out for what’s supposed to be after dinner coffee, though they eventually wander back to her place, kick their feet up on the table in the living room, and polish off half a bottle of whiskey between them. It apparently doesn’t do anything for Steve, but he says he likes the company, and Sharon pretends it’s just the liquor that’s making her cheeks feel warm.

They stand very close to one another just before Steve leaves. So much heat between their bodies, so much breath exchanged. He smells of simple soap, the clean kind of sweat, and a mild, spiced aftershave. No contact at all, all night, but they stood like that in the doorway for what in Sharon’s memory feels like a year. She lingers over the light in his eyes, the spit-sheen on his lower lip, the echo of strength in the shadows cast by the slanted light over the sinew and bone of his clavicle, throat; the invitation that is a man’s open collar.

Sharon lies in bed and replays the moment a hundred times, unable to answer the how, the why, the reality of an unkissed goodnight.

-

It’s not noon before his shadow comes prowling around. Sharon realises it’s maybe not a fair thought, but that’s what he’s like, matching opposites. Steve knocked; he rings the bell.

She opens the door carefully. He steps inside and takes off his hat, but makes no further moves to come into her space. They look at one another levelly for another moment, and Sharon gives first. “Coffee?”

He makes a face, but he nods, and then follows her in. Steve, yesterday, took off his boots first.

-

They’re standing on either side of her kitchen island, and her visitor neglects the sugar and cream she put out.

“What,” says Sharon, unsure of herself and uncomfortable with that fact, “what should I call you?”

“Barnes’s good,” he says, giving her the corner of a smile. “Barnes’ll do. And you? Who’re you, now?”

Sharon stands very still. Barnes knows exactly what kind of question he’s asked her. And it’s fair, really. It’s the same question she asked him.

“Carter,” she says.

Barnes swallows, though his coffee mug remains untouched on the counter. “Carter, all right,” he says, and Sharon gets the distinct impression that this isn’t the first time that name has snapped sharply between his tongue and teeth. There’s something in the way his eyes linger on her mouth, the corner of her jaw, the single curl of hair that’s fallen short of her braid. “Carter, I’d like to propose a compromise,” he says.

Sharon squares her shoulders. “You would.”

There’s a crack, suddenly, his heaviness broken by something cheeky and airy. “Yes ma’am,” he says, a cocksure smile stretching all the way up to his eyes. Sharon finds herself smiling very softly in response, an echo of his joyful certainty.

-

Once, when Sharon was small, she found the photograph of Steve in its silver frame. Not hidden, but put away in a bedside drawer she wasn’t meant to look into. In it, his hair is in his eyes, his shirt hangs from his thin shoulders, his dogtags flop too low against his chest. He’s looking away from the lens, at something in foggy middle distance, resolution and survival and determination in all the thin lines of his face. Sharon never touched the photograph, though she would return to it regularly in her childhood, looking for the bravery she knew her aunt so adored.

It wasn’t until she was older that she ever bothered to turn the frame over.

-

“We,” says Barnes, carefully, “Steve an’ me have been stuck at the hip since we were kids.” He’s sitting opposite her at the kitchen table now, their coffee forgotten and cold. He sweeps his hands through his hair and remakes the little knot at the nape of his neck, but the short strands at the front fall through again. He tucks them behind his ears, clearly distracted. “We did everything together.”

Sharon doesn’t tell him that she’s read the same passage in every history textbook she’s ever owned. There’s a deep line between his brows that tells her he’s likely thinking the same thing.

“There’s a,” he pauses, “things are different now, I guess. Nobody but the real young kids do the double-dates anymore,” he says, mostly to himself. Then, to Sharon, “The double-dates were the fun ones.”

She looks at him skeptically.

“See!” he exclaims, mostly to himself. “I dunno what happened. It was the thirties. Nobody had anything, but we could go dancing, so. And dancing’s more fun when there’s more folks around. Maybe that’s it.” Barnes tumbles into talking to himself again.

“That’s true,” she allows him.

Barnes’s smile catches like tinder. “Do you dance, Carter?”

“Only for specific reasons.”

“All right,” he says, with a grin. “All right, Carter, you’ve got your reasons.”

“I think you do, too,” she says, leaning forward on her elbows. “You still haven’t told me why you came here.”

Barnes copies her stance, leaning in. His prosthetic is as large as his flesh arm, but it looks heavier; he carries it like it’s heavier. There’s something about the grace of him that makes Sharon think of a cat. There’s something in his eyes that’s sleepy and predaceous, and how he snaps her name between his tongue and teeth like it belongs there.

“Carter,” he says, “you figured me out the moment you gave me your name.”

She swallows.

“Steve would never ask. Never did in the past. That’s nerves for ya. Bullheaded and about as fearless as a terrier; god forbid he should actually _talk_ to a pretty girl.”

“You’ve talked a lot,” Sharon challenges him, “but you haven’t said anything.”

Barnes bites his lower lip, allowing it to pull before rolling free. He bares his teeth at her in a hungry expression. “How much do you know,” he says, though his tone clearly implies _how much do you think you know_. “I’m not looking to relive some glory days fantasy.”

“Then what are you looking for?”

Barnes licks his lip. “A woman who ain’t afraid of both of us.”

-

When she sees him out, they stand in the exact positions she and Steve had occupied the evening previous. Barnes smells of new soap and warm leather, gun oil and coffee. Sharon wonders if she should move, if he will; if neither does, and Steve won’t, it leaves their potential trio dead in the water before the race even starts. Sharon thinks about being the one to break, the one to lean in – Barnes radiates just as much heat as Steve, but there’s something bigger about him, something needier, heavier – but then she catches the twist of Barnes’s mouth, like he can read what she’s thinking, like it’s all a game. Her temper flares.

Barnes, for a single moment, laughs like the sun, and then he puts his hands on her waist, kissing her hard and smooth. His hands linger when he tilts his head back; Sharon’s surprised, as the kiss was chaste for all that it was intense.

“Was that how people kissed in the forties?”

“No,” he says, leaning down to trail his breath along her throat, pressing his nose into the corner of her jaw and ghosting his lips on the sensitive skin behind her ear. Sharon keeps her breath even, her grip on his shoulder and waist relaxed. “That’s like,” he pauses, pulling her body more tightly against his, “a letter of intent.”

“Uh-huh,” says Sharon, unimpressed. “Intending what?”

Barnes looks at her very seriously for a moment. Then, he kisses her again, soft presses that invite apart her lips. Sharon feels his hand slide up her back, supporting her neck, curling into her hair. The sweet touch of his tongue across the inside of her teeth pulls from her a sigh she didn’t mean to let go. Barnes takes the ground she gives, and by the time she realises she’s panting into his mouth, his jacket is snared in her fist and he’s smiling against her warm, sore lips.

-

Sharon replays the moment a hundred times during her day. She interrogates herself, her preparedness for the consequences. She finds the answers to the how and the why, the reality of a kiss like that. All of those answers are _yes_.

-

The silver frame had, taped to its black velvet backing, another photograph, and this one much smaller. It’s an official document portrait, not twice larger than a stamp. The man inside is healthy, clever; bright eyes and neatly combed dark hair, a cocksure expression that says he’s knows what you’re thinking and yes, in fact, he’s as good as he thinks he is.

It wasn’t until Sharon was much older still that she ever thought to open the frame.

-

Steve sits in an open sitting room, his back to the door, his hand at an easel. He’s totally absorbed in his work; it takes Barnes leading the way into the room and saying, “Hey, punk, d’ya leave your ears in France, c’mon.”

“No,” Steve starts, “but I’ll tell ya whatcha left in the fuckin’ Mediter- oh,” he says. “Hi, Sharon.”

She bites back a smile. “Hi, Steve.”

The three of them stand in the middle of the room, awkward and silent.

Barnes makes an exasperated sound. “Christ alive,” he complains, “I was told things went _faster_ in the future.”

“Buck,” Steve says.

“Don’t,” says Barnes. “Sit, both’a ya. Come to terms, what have you.”

“What,” says Steve.

“Barnes!” calls Sharon.

“No can do, Carter.”

Distantly, a door slams.

“He calls you Carter?” Steve asks.

“Yeah,” she says. “We agreed on it.”

“Huh,” says Steve, his expression distant.

Sharon follows her thought. “We, um, agreed on a lot of things, actually.”

Steve cuts her a look.

“Just,” says Sharon, “not to hang up on it, but just to get it out of the way. I know about your history with my aunt,” she says, and Steve nods. It was never secret, or clandestine, not that. “I mean, I’ve known my whole life. But.”

She stops, and looks at her hands. “About, what, fifteen years ago, I found out about her history with the both of you.”

Steve’s expression doesn’t budge.

“There was a,” she nods her head in the direction of his easel, “a sketch,” she says, and Steve lets out a long, long breath. “In the inside of a photograph frame.”

“Of?” Steve asks.

“The three of you.”

Steve puts his head in his hands, but he recovers quickly enough. “You know,” he says, with a huff of laughter, “it doesn’t bother me that you found it. It bothers me that you found it when you were a _teenager_. Ugh.” He rubs his palms up and down the length of his thighs.

Sharon leans back on the couch and laughs.

-

“So,” says Steve, into the quiet. “It’s something you want to try?”

Sharon sighs, and fiddles with her hands. “Knowing what I know about the both of you. And knowing myself, I think, I guess… Yeah. The three of us makes more sense than any two.”

Steve nods, mostly to himself. “It always made sense to us,” he says quietly. “But, if, y’know, you ever need space, or need a break – this isn’t permanent. This is just a choice. And it's choosing to not have to pick sides. Happiness is somethin’ you’ve gotta learn for yourself.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhmm,” he replies. “I’ve always been happiest when I had Buck, but us together…” he looks at her carefully. “We were always best together when we had someone brave enough to balance us out.”

“I don’t want to be a counterweight,” Sharon tells him.

“No, absolutely,” he says, “you’re not. You won’t be. It’s all give and take,” he says, “but Buck and I have been together for so long that we spin out when we don’t have somewhere else to put our attention. We’re…”

“What the dope’s tryna say is that we’re intense,” Barnes says, leaning against the doorframe on the other side of the room, “and we know it. Let the artist explain it, though,” he says, moving across the room. “Triangle’s the strongest shape ‘cause it’s got three equal sides.”

“ _Equal_ is more important than _three_ in that sentence,” says Sharon.

Barnes smiles like summertime, like the flame that begs to be touched. “Exactly,” he says. “That’s why we’ve gone and fallen for you.”

-

_“Whadaya mean ya didn’t kiss her?”_

-

They invite her over the following day.

“Stark made us a wreck-room,” says Barnes. “Come spar with me.”

The fingerless glove he normally wears is replaced by a full glove. She touches the back of his hand for just a moment, an expression of curiosity.

He flexes, and the plates along the forearm shift, separate, slide together, and then he waggles his covered fingers. “The plates in the digits are even smaller, they move more,” he explains, “hurts like hell to get hair snagged.” He reaches over her shoulder, flipping at the loose ends of her pony. “Easy enough to prevent.”

Sharon swallows audibly, and Barnes stops short. “Hey,” he says, staying out of her space but looking for her eyeline. “Whoa,” he says, “tell me what’s happening in your head.”

Sharon shakes herself. “Sorry, no, sorry, I didn’t mean… I just, zoned for a second.”

Barnes looks at her carefully.

“I’ve got some questions about… your arm. About you and your arm,” she corrects, “what bothers you. What I shouldn’t do.”

Barnes grins like a cat. “Every time you pin me, you get an answer.”

Sharon grins right back.

-

Barnes swipes damp hair from his face. They’re matched five to five pins, but Sharon is certain he’s going easy on her. Their movements are all new to each other, and there’s something sparking and exciting every time contact is made; the physicality of learning someone else’s body leaves Sharon full of heat and anticipation. It distracts her, too, and Barnes gets the last two pins. He holds her down for a moment, his body aligned directly over hers.

Sharon makes a decision. She wraps her legs around his waist, watching his face. Barnes sinks into the contact, and Sharon makes a sound of satisfaction, loosed from low in her throat. He props himself up on his flesh elbow, and takes the glove off his metal hand with his teeth. It’s surprisingly cool as it trails over her skin, occasionally skimming over the slick patches of sweat that have pooled in the hollows of her body. It leaves a feeling like electricity in its wake.

“If we,” asks Sharon, unable to contain the question any longer, “how do you.” A blush burns her cheeks, and she’s glad to think her flush covers it.

Barnes’s expression is delighted when he catches on to her embarrassment. He ducks down and kisses her, squeezing and petting her sides, her thigh. He rolls, pulling her atop his body, astride his hips, and the contact makes them both groan.

“Before I answer that,” he says, “I think you’d better call me Bucky.”

-

They pet and tease a little more on the padded floor, but Bucky quickly begs away for a shower. Sharon wanders into the kitchen, where Steve is cooking. Her stomach grumbles before she can say anything, and Steve laughs.

“Does a BLT suit you?” he asks, “’cause that’s all that’s happening right now.”

“Really?” she asks, “Then what’s this?” There’s a long smear of pale blue paint along his cheek. Sharon swipes her finger through the portion that still shows itself, shiny and wet. She holds the evidence for his examination.

“Oh,” he says, “I’m trying my hand at landscapes.”

“How are they,” she asks, stealing slices of tomato.

“Big,” he says, “detailed, but not very dynamic.”

“What do you prefer?” Sharon gives up on waiting, steals a slice of toast and uses her instinct to find jam.

“People,” he says, guilelessly. “They move and breathe and they’re just... so much more exciting to catch.”

Sharon, very studiously, does not think of the sketch she’d found at sixteen. She takes a bite of her toast and nods. “Hm-mhm.”

Steve’s expression twists up in a pleasant smile. “You’ve got,” he gestures. Sharon swipes at her mouth with the back of her hand, and feels the jewel of jam smear all the way across her lip. She sighs, reaching for the paper towels at Steve’s elbow.

“Hey,” he says, catching her hand and then touching her waist very gently, “let me,” he asks.

Sharon smiles into the kiss.

-

Bucky finds them in the room with Steve’s paints, though there’s more smeared on either of them than on any canvas. “For the love of-” he starts.

“Bucky,” complains Sharon from her perch, “he won’t let me move.”

“Five of twelve pins says you could probably fight him for it,” he says, wandering out of the room.

“You call him Bucky now?” Steve asks.

“He told me about his hand,” she says, “what’ll happen when we, y’know…” She makes an indefinite gesture, shrugging her shoulder.

“Huh,” says Steve. The edges of his ears have pinked.

“Hey,” he says, after a moment of quiet. “Would it bother you, if, when… whenever. Can I draw you? Draw us?”

“Like that other…?”

“Sure,” he says, “but please don’t leave ‘em where your nosy teenage relatives will find ‘em. Wait. D’ya have any teenage relatives?”

-

Sharon has a shower while Steve cooks; he convinces her to stay for dinner. Bucky stands very close behind her and gently slips his hand inside her borrowed robe; he convinces her to stay for dessert.

-

They start very slowly; clothes come away by single articles, and skin is mapped by three tongues and six hands before new territory is exposed. She would find it exhausting to be their sole focus, but this is an act they’ve perfected. They give and take, and when Sharon’s lungs beg for breath there is always clean air waiting for her, always a soft smile waiting for her.

Bucky holds her close on the couch, touching her gently. She skids her hand down his metal arm and links their fingers together, showing him where she likes to be touched. Steve’s knees are the first to buckle, and he kneels at her feet with a mouthful of prayers, lips and tongue chasing their joined fingers. Bucky strokes her, pets her, reminds her to breathe, and when a cold, untouched spot on his shoulder bumps against her back a wild thought moves through her mind about nighttime in the scorched desert, how the moon isn’t enough to keep you warm.

The heat of Steve’s tongue moves into her body and Sharon loses the thought, blinded by the stars behind her eyelids.

He quietly insists the serum will take care of things, begging to watch and manhandle himself while she and Bucky move together first. They shift on the couch, measure and rearrange their bodies, and he supports the arch in her back and he pushes slowly in. He’s too far away to kiss and grinning like a cat, so Sharon reaches down, smears her wetness over two fingers, and then slides them against Bucky’s stretched lip, curling down on the meat of his tongue. Something as hot as summer glints in his eyes as he sucks her fingers into his mouth to the third knuckle, spit dripping down her palm. He pulls off and curls his tongue to a tight tip, licking her elbow, wrist, palm, and lewdly sucking it all back into his mouth.

Across the room, Steve moans, flushed pink all the way to his navel. The head of his cock, a beautiful tulip curve, shows red in the gaps of his fingers, sticky pre-come shining in the light. For as long as Sharon looks at him, his gaze never leaves her face.

She stands and stretches after Bucky gently separates their bodies. She feels a small rush of his come run down the inside of her thigh, but before she can reach for a tissue Steve is there, dragging his fingers through it and overwhelming her space, pressing only the tips of his fingers and the ghost of kisses into her skin. He snags the blanket from the back of the couch, shoves away the coffee table, and makes room for them on the floor. His own come is still smeared across his belly and the length of his persistent erection and the push in is such a perfect glide that Sharon loses herself for a moment.

Steve fucks like he fights, and he fights like he needs something. Bucky is there only for the delight of it, Sharon realises, that he could gladly string her out for as many orgasms as she could stand and then ask of her one more, all while taking none for himself. She had a flash of understanding, suddenly, about Steve’s comment of balance, Bucky’s word of intensity. They were two bottomless wells trying to fill each other, but the point of commonality is what stabilises them. Her mind, her body, her voice and opinions and instructions , a beacon for those endless hearts that are happier side by side, not worshipping each other, but worshipping together.

Steve stokes in her the listless heat of high summer nights, the wet fire that chokes and consumes. He presses his face into the flat stretch across her sternum, and Sharon takes advantage, rolling them over, and slaking his deep hunger with her own demand to be filled.

-

“You shoulda seen ‘em,” Bucky whispers. “Matched set, if the universe worked like that. Steve was always gonna marry Mags,” he says into her hair. “It was always gonna be the two of them. I was just the lucky bastard along for the ride.”

“Not this time,” says Sharon.

Steve snores softly on her other side, his nose mashed under the soft swell of her breast, his damp bangs tickling her skin. “The matched set is you two,” she whispers.

“Hmm?” he mumbles. Bucky rolls up on his elbow to look her in the face. Very gently, she sweeps the hair from his eyes.

“Universe works like that,” she tells him.

“You figure?”

She nods.

“All right,” he says, pressing a couple of chaste, tender kisses across her lips and cheeks. He folds himself down, stubbled cheek against the softness over her small ribs. His fingers dip and trail over her body, but when they crawl through their remnant dew to linger at the apex of her thighs, she swats the back of his head gently.

“Don’t,” she whispers, “I’ve had enough.”

He presses a kiss near her navel, and his hand drifts back down her thigh, the meat of his palm curling to cup the bump of her knee.

She cards her fingers through his hair, and he makes a soft sound, the deep tension of wakefulness slowly seeping out of the shadows cast his shoulders in the moonlight.

-

Sharon thinks about the two of them, about night and day and sun and moon. Summer and winter. All those matched, perfect opposites.

She wonders if they’ve taken for granted who’s who.

-

“Hey,” asks Sharon, one morning, weeks later. Steve has just ducked out of the shower ahead of them; he’s got a breakfast meeting with some yet-anonymous cape.

“Hmm?” Bucky leans back under the shower’s spray, eyes closed. Blindly, he reaches for her, finding the dip and swell of her hips. He rubs small circles into her skin, the promise that he’s listening.

“Way back,” Sharon says, working shampoo into her hair, “you started this whole thing by asking for a compromise.”

Bucky trades places with her, blinking clean water out of his eyes and then turning Sharon around. He works the lather from her hair under the water, and watches her face. “Yeah,” he says, “I remember.”

“What was the compromise?”

“Whadaya mean?”

“Are you,” she asks, sweeping suds off her forehead, “are you not getting something you want? Are you the one compromising? What else is there?”

“No, baby.” He turns his face into the crook of her clavicle, tongue chasing clean water. “This is it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to come to my tumblr askbox! Any MCU pairing/trio/poly group, and any one word prompt welcomed.


End file.
